Trent blight is not a disease that just waits for someone to get on the road. Medes used the treasured tin soldier positioning circle to risk forcibly teleporting himself to the public teleportation circle closest to Flint.

The young miscellaneous scientist did not have time to tidy up his appearance, his robe full of stains, his hair and beard in a mess. Under the messy bangs, tears kept dripping on the cracked teleportation silver plate.

He may never use it again.

Flint looked even worse than Medes—five months away, and now Flint was horribly thin, and there was no light in his eyes. It was as if the muscles and internal organs had been removed alive, leaving only a dying body.

Medith was unsure whether to hug his former head.

"Let me see Miss Ramon." He said simply, and walked into the simple house.

The phantom Oliver clenched Nemo's. Too bad he could only see half of his mother's face - Sonia reclining at the head of the bed, soft cloth wrapped around her eyes. She put one lightly on her obviously bulging belly, and there was a soothing smile on the corner of her mouth. Even if only half of his face is exposed, that smile is still sweet.

"Mr. Meders," she greeted politely, "Hello, this is our first time seeing each other. Unfortunately, I can't get out of bed to say hello to you."

She paused for a while: "Is there food on the table on the left? I'm hungry."

"Uh, yes." Medes responded subconsciously.

"Sure enough... Flint! You didn't eat well, what did I say last night?" Sonia's momentum was not diminished by the illness, although Flint looked haggard, he Still subconsciously shrinking his neck.

"Sonia..." Flint sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking his wife's sweaty bangs. "I'll eat in a minute, I promise."

Meders stood beside the bed, and a large array of magic formations of different sizes joined end to end and circled around Sonia from head to toe. He was silent for half a minute: "It is indeed Trent blight. According to the time you contacted me and Miss Ramon's physical condition, she is now at the end of the... contagious period. Flint, I have to talk to you alone. talk."

Hearing this, their fearless head trembled slightly.

"No." Sonia's voice was brisk, and the smile on the corner of her mouth still did not disappear. "I don't mind, I want to know."

“…Miss Ramon…”

"Speak, Balthazar." Flint squeezed his wife's. "Tell us."

"I know you must have notified me as soon as possible, but...it's too late." Medes gritted his teeth, "At the end of the infectious period, the curse has begun to spread, and I may have a way to make this process happen. slowed down, but…”

"How long will it last?" Sonia asked earnestly, "Flint told me about Trent blight, and I'm about to start having one. Is that so? "

"Usually, the first day after the contagious period ends, people can keep their normal thinking. But from the second day, the curse will start to destroy the brain. Eventually it will focus on your eyes, and turn them into the seeds of the Croydon blood tree."

"Yeah." Sonia didn't show a look of fear or collapse, she nodded calmly, and the one that was not held by Flint gently stroked her abdomen. "and then?"

"I, uh, based on my research..."

This wandering dancer is completely different from Dmitry. She didn't have the slightest charming temperament, and in the face of her impending death, Sonia looked calm and calm. And he himself began to stutter, his throat a little bitter,

"Based on my research, Flint was able to temporarily suppress the curse with his strength, allowing you to stay awake for two days. But after two days, no matter how hard he tried, the curse would... I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. If only I could have been there earlier, if I had done more research..."

"What if I don't want this child?" Flint asked suddenly.

"Pregnancy makes her physically weak, doesn't it? So if we don't want the baby, can she...even one more day..."

"Flint!" Sonia yelled.

"I'm sorry, Flint. Any external force applied now will exacerbate Miss Ramon's weakness." Medeth's long uncut nails pierced the palm of his hand.

The man who killed the Demon King sat on the edge of the bed, his lower lip trembling. After more than ten seconds, he finally let out a faint choked sob. As if it was himself who was pronounced near death.

"Mr. Meders." Sonia patted Flint's back and continued to ask calmly. "Are our children still alive?"

Meders stayed where she was for a while.

"From what I know, I have a wild guess. This child is still part of my body, and the main target of the curse is my brain. Even if the child will be infected with the curse, Then the onset of the disease should be the moment he or she survives as a 'human individual'. Isn't that so?"

"In theory..." This woman is terribly smart.

"That is - as long as the child survives, it will be the first case detected at the earliest stages of infection."

Sonia's rubbing of her abdomen stopped: "Listen to what you said just now, 'early detection' will help. And now there is indeed a patient who was found early enough. Dmitry Si, tell me, is there any hope for this child?"

"Yes," Meders replied numbly, "but that's just a theory, and... like I just said, any external force will affect your body..."

"I have at most two days to live." Sonia's voice was very firm, "My brain is rotten into a pot of porridge, I just have a body that can breathe, I don't want to die like that. When I lose consciousness After that, just think of a way to save the child."

"I see what you mean. Balthazar, come here, this time we have to talk to the two of us." Flint said with difficulty, like those words were embedded in broken glass, He vomited blood from his throat. "It's time for you to rest, Sonia."

"Don't go." Sonia grabbed her lover's shirt, "I want to stay with you a little longer. We made a promise to each other, dear. We won't hide anything from each other, you forgot ?"

"Sonia..."

"Even if I can't see it, I can smell it." She tried to make her tone light, "You have something on your mind, a very important one. Look, I'm not even afraid of death, yours Little secrets won't knock me out. Let me guess—you know who did it, don't you?"

"…" Flint closed his eyes in pain.

Medith gasped: "Do you need me to avoid it?"

"No, I believe in you, my brother." Flint hugged his wife wearily.

"Balthazar, I think you should have heard of the recent war between Alban and Willard." Flint lowered his eyes, "The two sides have been deadlocked."

"I know. But this should have nothing to do with you, didn't you agree with Your Majesty to retire?"

"Yes, but less than a month ago, Sampson called me into the palace to talk. You know I didn't protect Abbas well and let him die at the bottom of the abyss. Bring back the bone jade. It's considered to be serving the country, but personally... I always felt that I owed the Alastair family. So I went."

Flint did not use the title "Your Majesty".

"Sampson was very clear, he asked me 'Have you had enough rest'. He also said he could help me call anyone I wanted if I wanted. He wanted 'tin soldiers' 'Coming back, acting again as a legendary mercenary group, and even intervening in war."

"..." Medes was speechless.

"Actually, I think so too." The necromancer next to Oliver added at this moment, "Flint is still so young, he is so strong, he will always start all over again. To be honest, I...dream All want him to rebuild the Tin Soldier."

"How stupid I am," said the dry bone softly.

While Flint on the other side continued.

"I rejected him... Rather, I rejected him very firmly. I told him that I had brought back enough bone jade for Alban to use for five hundred years, and I did not want to insert War rebuilds the tin soldier. No one can replace my former comrade."

Flint smiled miserably: "I also told him that I had recently started looking for homes in remote villages and towns. My baby is four months away, and now I just want to be with my The family lived peacefully together. He said yes with a smile, like it was an old man's whim. I shouldn't have been so determined, Sonia, it was all my fault..."

"What did the Alastair family do?" Sonia pondered for a moment, "You didn't contact your brother immediately, why is this?"

"Hmm. This old friend of mine is more sober, brother he's too upright. Now I'm asking Iman for help, and I don't know what to do when he knows the truth - and he's right away To be a father, I don't want to take him away from his children."

Flint put his chin on his wife's shoulder: "Emanuel is the knight of the trial. If he has nothing to do with this matter, no matter how it ends, the Pope will keep him. Still no problem."

Meders stood stiffly, his Adam's apple rolling: "If I understand correctly, Flint. You mean... Your Majesty did all this?"

"I guess he didn't want me to find out...I..."

"Let me tell you." Sonia stroked Flint's hair and sighed softly. "Flint went to look for our future home the other day. He has always protected me very well, and our quarters are kept secret in order to prevent the retaliation of the tin soldiers enemies. Flint has also set up all over our quarters. A magic circle that detects powerful magic items. I won't be stupid enough to run around, at most at the market at the door."

"I smelled a wonderful aroma that day, oh my god, it's an indescribably wonderful scent. I went over to take a look at a blind old woman selling spice bags in a tent. I've always liked these things, Flint knows it, our majesty...should know too. Actually, it's rather suspicious now that I think about it, the old lady kept insisting that she would sell it to a 'fateful person' and drove away several Customers. And as soon as I went, she enthusiastically pulled me into the tent.”

"As if afraid of me running away." She smiled helplessly.

"Scent of Croydon Blood Tree." Medes guessed dryly.

"She pulled me and I was instantly drawn to the smell. Like all spice merchants, she took the spice bags apart in the tent to show the contents."

"There was a shriveled fruit with gold dust in it, I had never seen it before. So I looked closely for a while - and she grabbed mine and kept pointing at my heart with her finger. Fruit. I guess it's to make sure I have enough time to watch."

Flint hugged his beloved wife tightly and said nothing.

"Then my eyes started to hurt. At first I thought it was dust - but when I got home, the pain was still there. I traveled a lot, and I still know normal eye pain. Something was wrong, I contacted Flint immediately."

"And I found the breath of the curse of the abyss." Flint's mood finally calmed down.

"I thought so, too, before I had the occasional chat with Abbas." Anger finally began to appear in Flint's voice. "Abbas said a long time ago that he slipped into the palace laboratory warehouse while everyone was not paying attention, and discovered the source of the disease that should have disappeared. A smiley face."

"Sonia was wrong, my first reaction was to seek help from the court physicians, who soon diagnosed Trent blight. The emperor told me that the old woman was a spy sent by Willard, Was going to kill me and cause a plague in Alban. Let me mourn by the way - how reasonable it sounds."

"'It's Denny's arrangement, my poor boy. You're far from retirement, it's time to return to the battlefield.'  …he said."

"But after that, Sonia described the fruit to me. There's a smiling face at the bottom of the fruit, Balthazar." Flint's voice trembled violently.

"Maybe it's just a coincidence..." Medes struggled.

"There are two vertical lines on the mouth of the smiley face, which is a bit familiar, and I took a few more glances because of this." Sonia added with a sigh.

Abbas' usual mark, a smiley face with two vertical lines on its mouth. A secret code known only to Abbas's friends—there is no coincidence to explain what is happening now.

The room fell silent for a while.

"Remember our agreement, Flint?" Sonia was the first to speak.

"Which?"

"The one you said after the marriage proposal - if you, as a mercenary, die when your child can't remember, let me not tell the child too much about you. You don't want your offspring There are too naive visions for this profession."

"Hmm."

"Now is my request, if our child survives, you don't tell him anything about me. Although I don't think you'll do anything stupid, and I don't want him Growing up with hatred. Promise me, Flint."

"I..."

"Please."

"...Okay." The head of the Tin Soldiers Mercenary Regiment's eyes were red, and he looked like he was about to cry.

"I'm really tired now, maybe you two need a little communication time." Sonia clenched the quilt and tried to give them a smile. "Go talk for a while, lads. I need a half-hour's sleep."

But when they walked out of the room and closed the door, they could still hear the desperate and depressed cry in the room.

Flint burst into tears. He gritted his teeth, not daring to make a sound. It wasn't until he got far enough that he dared to allow himself to let out a loud sob.

"Flint..." Medes took a step back.

"What do I need to do next?" After finally calming down, the most powerful man on the surface was finally able to speak again.

"Your child can survive, there is only a little theoretical hope." Medes closed his eyes in pain. "As your friend, I advise you to give up."

"Tell me what to do," Flint murmured. "It's her wish."

"Five-month-old fetus...you need your own flesh and strength to keep this child alive. And that's not considering Trent blight. If you really want to save that child , the curse must be suppressed with strength and sealed in that heart."

"If only to seal..."

"It's not as simple as sealing." Under the shock of a series of despair, Medes finally cried out in collapse. "The curse is held in the heart, and the heart grows, but it can't beat! Listen, it can't beat! You've got to put in enough extra power to support it with your power—you know that means What, Flint, it's going to hollow you out!"

Medith tugged at her hair.

"I have to tell you, even if you do, the chances of this child surviving are a measly few percent. But once your power is drained to the limit, it will not It'll be back! You...you can't take us with you..."

"If I can, I want to be a good father." Flint wiped the tears from his face fiercely and squeezed the sentence from his teeth. "It's definitely hard, I know, but that doesn't require world-shattering forces."

"You'll have nothing." Medeth's palm is still bleeding from the scratch, "If this kid...you really have nothing. Please Flint, you Always the most rational one of us. Yes, I feel sorry for Sonia too, but you will come out, and everyone will always come out. Your future is still very long, and you are very awake now..."

"I won't come out." Flint said word by word.

"There's only one Sonia Ramon and only one Flint Lopez in this world. There can't be two identical feelings, and I'm pretty sure I can't get out. "

"Many people have had this experience, you can't be so weak!"

"You don't understand, Balthazar. I'm going to be homeless soon."

"You'll have another home, Flint... Captain!"

"No, never again. The home that belongs to me, never again."

Oliver's eye circles were red, he let out a long sigh of relief, trying to keep himself breathing in this oppressive fantasy. He grabbed his chest, his heart was beating vigorously.

"As you can see. Sonia was awake for two days, and then...I took you out of your mother, Oliver Ramon. The head of the group was like a pre-appointment Okay that starts to save you, but the over-infusion of power is very painful, like peeling off the skin. I thought that at this point, the captain would retreat. But he didn't."

"He's really crazy. From the moment Miss Ramon died, he was crazy. At least that's what I thought at the time. He was crazy to save you. Over and over, shouting hoarsely—'This kid isn't even a whole person, Sonia is dead, she won't know—you should do it for yourself.'"

"Then he beat me." The necromancer touched his skinless cheek.

"I left there without seeing the result, maybe I didn't want to see the despair of the most powerful man. Your father didn't let anyone approach him at that time, he guarded your mother's body, One was holding on to the raging fire, and the other was doing everything in his power to save you. At the time, you looked like a formless corpse, and he didn't even look… not very human."

"That doesn't sound like a terribly wrong." Oliver's voice trembled a little. "Maybe you're blaming yourself too much."

"No."

The necromancer stood in the fog and did not call out more images.

"As a coward, I have been inquiring about him from afar since then. A month later I heard that he had returned near the capital of Alban with the Sword of Remnant, without Boy, just carrying a coffin. I thought..."

"You think he's going to seek revenge on Sampson?" Nemo's voice was flat, and he had a pretty bad guess.

"It was a critical period of the war," said the dry bone softly. "If he killed Alban's king at that time, Alban would be finished."

Oliver turned his head in disbelief, staring at the Necromancer beside him.

Medith held the tin soldier's badge with a bone full of charms.

"I struggled for a long time."

"The head of the regiment is the person I admire the most in the world, but I've seen him in the craziest, most irrational side...I ask myself, do I really have the right to put people in the whole country Is your life staked on the character of a desperate person?"

Nemo closed his eyes and took a long sigh.

"...I told Sampson. I betrayed the captain's trust, I told Sampson." Blood and tears flowed from the skeleton's eyes.

"I told him... Flint knew what you were doing, be careful not to see him."

"Since I'm still alive, that means that my father was not the capital that went for revenge." Oliver looked away from Medeth.

"Yes. He's still the same Flint Lopez after all." Meders' voice was full of pain and remorse. "But Sampson Alastair is Sampson Alastair after all. He knows that in this way, he has completely offended Flint, a strong man... He took advantage of Flint's weakness to attack Flint. Lint issued a hunt order."

"I knelt down and begged the king countless times and assured him that Flint was no longer the unusually strong man he used to be...but he didn't believe it."

"Because you are a member of the Tin Soldier." Ann's tone was full of sarcasm, "He wouldn't believe it, he is just that kind of person - the ruthless king who stifled all danger in the bud. ."

"Then another month, Sampson got a gift. A gift from Flint Lopez."

“…gift?” Adrian frowned.

"Flint's own right arm." The light in Medes' eyes dimmed, "Only a note was attached, 'We will be separated from now on.'"

"It was severed with complex abyss magic and cannot be restored by healing. The captain also knows Sampson... Now that I think about it, he should be protecting you, Oliver. He wants to eliminate his own 'Threat' to protect you from Alban's pursuit."

"But Uncle Ramon... no, the right arm of the Flint we know is intact."

"This is what I'm going to tell you, the end of the story." Meders glanced at Oliver who was silent, his voice very weak. With trembling fingers, he summoned the last vision.

Young Medes is standing in the room.

A noose hangs in the house, and Medes is standing in front of it, staring blankly at the rope swinging back and forth. He stretched out one and fiddled with it lightly.

He shaved and groomed himself neatly, the tin soldier's badge gleaming on his chest.

After a few minutes, he sighed slightly and got up on the chair. But the communication crystal engraved with the emblem of the tin soldier began to flicker at this moment. Meders fell straight off the wooden chair, he didn't even have time to stand up, he climbed directly beside the crystal—

"Let's meet, Balthazar." Flint's voice came from the crystal, "It's time to end this."